Florence suspended in time

Our second story of the city at the time of the Coronavirus, signed by Niccolò Rastrelli

Florence deserted.

Like inside a romantic painting: the bank of the Arno of a Florence during the Coronavirus

Silent, motionless yet always alive and beautiful. Flooded with golden light rustling over the plaster of the palaces, kissing the hot stones of the frames around the green shutters, the arched facades and colonnades - now more abstract than ever - of the historic buildings that like the wings of a great open-air theatre stand there, empty and suspended in time, waiting for the interval to end and the spectacle of life to move, even imperfectly, that unreal pause.

The inhabitants of Florence at the windows of their homes

But Niccolò Rastrelli, the author of these images, is too seduced by human matter, by the spectacle of life, to dwell on the interval.

Santa Maria Novella Central Station

And, despite the quarantine of these days imposing the scenario of a metaphysical Florence never seen before, he has managed to capture mute and composed traces of 'resistance' with his lens always more ready to sculpt than to photograph.

The famous carousel in Piazza delle Repubblica

To the point of transforming the vision of a city made up of isolated palaces and churches, created by Brunelleschi or Michelangelo.

The poetics of a deserted Piazzale Michelangelo, as it has never been before

Into living matter that vibrates even in the times of the Coronavirus: strong stone and pietra serena, silver, bronze, the land of Siena, the water of the Arno, living substance crossed by an irrepressible animation even when it seems to be still. 

The few citizens who walk through the city